


Definitions

by Ladycat



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-12 00:30:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the absent sincerity that he reacted to, Xander knew that. They’d had this conversation before and each was still certain that they’d convince the other of their view point. As if it mattered. Lindsey may be stubborn as a donkey, but he wasn’t near as stubborn as a Xander.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Definitions

Xander straddled Lindsey’s back, experience telling him just how much weight he could press against stocky thighs and a surprisingly comfortable ass. Lindsey groaned at the pressure but didn’t remove his face from the pillows it was buried in.

He started at the top. Broad shoulders, both broader and wider than the stocky appearance indicated. Muscles bunched and flexed as he massaged them, hard against his fingers. These weren’t the kind of muscles that came from a gym, though Lindsey went to one at least four or five times a week. These muscles came from work. Hauling feed down for the chickens, forcing recalcitrant animals into their appropriate pens. Doing the work of the plow when the ancient machine predictably broke. These were the stories Lindsey had told him over half-empty bottles of wine or cases of beer, glimpses into a world that Xander could hardly fathom.

“Good hands,” Lindsey mumbled into the pillow. “Musician’s hands.”

“I believe those are _your_ hands, Mr. Guitar Playing God,” Xander quipped back. “Unless you think callused and rough is a good trait.”

Unwilling to hear Lindsey’s rejoinder, Xander dug a thumb in the muscle right above Lindsey’s kidneys. The pressure was close enough to be uncomfortable, but precise enough that the tension Lindsey always carried around his middle was forced to ease. Some men wore their stress in their shoulders, the tight swing of their arms. Lindsey just braced himself, unmoving and solid and as stubborn as the donkey that had once kicked his arm into breaking in three places. Xander hated when he saw Lindsey’s back go rigid, the muscles distended even underneath the expensive silk of his shirt to create a topographical map Xander knew intimately.

“Ouch.” There was accusation amidst laughter there, Lindsey lifting his head just enough that a long strand of hair flopped into his eyes. He was growing it again, since his new position gave him enough authority to not give a damn. That and less trial-time, for which Xander was grateful. Lindsey during an active trial was Lindsey with masks on. “I’m breakable, you know.”

“No, you’re not.”

Lindsey turned even more, hip rising to fit snugly between Xander’s legs. “Yeah,” he repeated. “I am.” 

It was the absent sincerity that he reacted to, Xander knew that. They’d had this conversation before and each was still certain that they’d convince the other of their view point. As if it mattered. Lindsey may be stubborn as a donkey, but he wasn’t near as stubborn as a Xander.

And it wasn’t like their points were mutually exclusive, either. It was all just a difference of perspective.

Lindsey worried that Xander was too dependent on him. That the kinky little relationship they had in the bedroom would start to extend beyond the borders of those sun-filled walls. _Neither_ of them wanted that, but trying to convince Lindsey of that was impossible. Until he found the proof on his own, nothing Xander said would make a difference.

But that was okay, really. Lindsey was methodical, clever, and just twisted enough to understand the labyrinth of Xander’s brain. He’d get there—and then, hopefully, he’d finally see what Xander kept wanting him to see.

Scooting backward, Xander worked the lower back muscles. Heat rose up to melt into his skin, the scent of whiskey and hay and tastefully expensive cologne so thick that Xander could practically taste it on his tongue. He wanted to lean down and lick along the edges of Lindsey’s jeans, or remove them entirely, but he didn’t. Not yet, anyway.

“Don’t put so much faith in me.” Lindsey’s voice was honey-rough in its muffled state.

Xander sighed and attacked the set of muscles that always tensed when Lindsey was discussing this with him. Although why they were doing so _now_... “I don’t,” he repeated, and for a change added, “I put just enough.”

He’d never been with a man before. He’d said that to Lindsey, who’d misunderstood ‘with’ and even ‘man’, heading down that subject with a single-minded lawyerness that left Xander unable to explain that he hadn’t meant sexually. And he hadn’t meant male.

Xander had known fathers, both the one he’d been born to and the one who still stuttered and fumbled for glasses he’d long given up for contacts when the subject came up. He’d known teachers. Kids, both older and younger than he was. He’d known vampire hunters and the vampires themselves. All of those people and more, they’d been men in the technical definition. But it was what they were, their roles and how they and Xander interacted, that had defined them.

Lindsey was a man. An adult who could still remember how to be a kid, if pressured. He wasn’t a teacher, though sometimes Xander thought Lindsey had taught him more than anyone else. He wasn’t a father-figure, despite the games they very occasionally tried to play. He was a friend, but in a way Xander had never experienced before. He was a lawyer, a musician, occasionally, a homicidally dangerous bastard that scared Xander. He was so _many_ things, and more Xander didn’t have definitions for, that he, Lindsey, eclipsed all of the narrow borders people applied to him. He was a _man_.

And he was Xander’s lover.


End file.
